From My Briefcase: Cure the economy: give me more money

All I recall from Economics 101 in college are two phrases "guns and butter" and "the law of diminishing returns." So I make no claim to understand what's going on in the stock exchanges, which appear to me to operate in knee-jerk fashion to rumors.

As for the economy as a whole, I just don't get it. It's not as if I don't try. I read The Wall Street Journal with religious zeal. The Internet has allowed me to read international newspapers, such as the London Times. I've even tried to add the concept of "stock portfolio" to my consciousness, but truthfully, I'm so confused! But of course, I'm a wordsmith, not a numbers person. I couldn't even balance my checkbook when I kept it on a computer spreadsheet.

The whole concept of inflation makes no sense. It scares me that what happens to Japan's economy affects me. And when the financial ramifications of the wholesale slaughter of sheep and cattle in Great Britain on that country's economy show up, I'm absolutely petrified for the whole world.

When Alan Greenspan does something, I don't understand why, and no one appears to be completely satisfied with the results, anyway. Even the U.S. tax cut issue is fuzzy and confusing.

But all that aside, I would like to offer a simplistic remedy for the economy: Give me money! I have a hole in my purse where the money goes.

Seriously, if I have more money from my paycheck to spend, I spend it. Truthfully, I have been known to spend it when I didn't have it, but all by myself I can't fix the economy. And therein, perhaps, lies the answer to our income tax cut predicament and economic problems.

Figure out a way to give me, the average income earner, more money to spend, and I promise, on my honor, I will spend it, probably within 24 hours. If I have even more, then I'll save some, too. Maybe.

Now the Democrats in Congress seem to want to do that, and retroactively too. They want to give us money back right away, not just over a long period of time as the more conservative Republicans do. That sounds fine to me. But I wonder if Congress might ever consider not taking so much money in the first place. Or they could take none at all. That isn't a heretical statement either.

You know, there was a time in the country when we didn't even have to pay income tax. Because I have a law degree, some exposure to the history of the income tax came with it.

It seems that my favorite all-time person, Thomas Jefferson, and the rest of our Founding Fathers didn't see a federal income tax as a necessity. We had to amend the Constitution, I believe in the 1920s, to give the federal government the right to dip into our paychecks. However did we get along for 130 years without income tax to fund the federal government?

We're so used to having our pockets picked, we never thought to ask if we should allow it. When I look at how Springfield manages to fund projects with a small percentage sales tax approved by voters or by selling municipal bonds I wonder why the feds can't do that?

But aside from doing away with the income tax altogether, an idea whose time might not yet be here, we go back to the original idea give me cash.

A recent cartoon, "Cathy," by Cathy Guisewite, put it rather pithily. Her boss is poring over the newspaper worrying about stock losses, sales dropping and pending layoffs. Cathy, on the other hand wonderful middle-class consumer that she is has attacked the economic slow-down problem from the other end. She is shopping for spring clothes.

Holding a small item up for closer examination, she shrieks, "$230 for a tank top??" But the savvy salesgirls counter, "It's up to us again, girls!" reminiscent of Rosie the Riveter of World War II.

Rosie represented the American woman who came into the work force when our boys went overseas. She worked in the factories building airplanes and tanks, she sweated in construction, riveting steel beams in place for buildings. Oh yes, she also baked bread, washed clothes and wiped snotty noses.

But back to the cartoon. As Cathy considers the expensive purchase, the other saleslady appeals to her conscience "Your country needs you," a reminder that when we spend, we create jobs and profit.

Isn't that easier than "guns and butter?"

(Cheryl Capages is a reporter for the Springfield Business Journal.)